Tips and Ideas on Decorating a Small Home Office

Interested in decorating a small home office? If so, decorating the perfect small home office can be achieved by considering several important things that will get you on the right track.

Since a small home office requires that you choose space conservative options in comparison to decorating a basic home office, you’ll want to be cautious about specific things.

When decorating a small home office, as always it just takes a bit more focus than usual to obtain your goals.

To make it simple, if you deal with 3 essential steps the rest will fall into place.

If you’re wondering what those 3 essential steps are, they are adding…

Practicality
Functionality
Personality

Once you’ve actively included those 3 things, you’ll be well on
your way.

And now that we’ve brought each one to light, let’s talk about how you can incorporate those things now. But first let me mention that although we’ll be discussing each step in specific order, you’ll want to keep in mind is that these steps can be arranged in whatever order best suits you.

Step One – Making Your Small Home Office Practical

Making your small home office practical starts with choosing the best space saving desk. It is one of the most important pieces of furniture, and likely the central piece as well as the most used piece.

So when you consider purchasing a desk for your small home office, you’re going to want one that is as space efficient as possible.

But in having one you’ll want to be certain you’re not sacrificing important features.

With that in mind, there are various space saving desks to choose from that fall under two categories.

You can consider compact desks and wall mounted desks.

Both have their pros and cons. What makes one more practical than the other really depends on you and your needs.

If you can allow for an ample amount of surrounding space in your home office to include storage furniture, such as a bookcase, file cabinet, or an optional room divider, the compact desk might suit you well.

But if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, office wall desks will likely be your best bet.

They will not only offer you space for your computer system, but you’ll also get storage space included in which you can place most of your office supplies on.

Step Two – Making Your Small Home Office Functional

Making your small home office functional relies on practical arrangement.

Focusing on your daily routine will help you understand where to place your furniture, the right type of lighting needed, the right type of storage furniture and how to keep things organized.

The 4 essentials for making your small home office functional are…

Focusing on the color of your walls of your home office
Understanding the best way to light your home office
Deciding on the storage furniture that you’ll need
Coming up with an effective way to stay organized

All play a large part in creating the perfect work flow.

Focusing on the Color of Your Home Office

Although your office is in your home, it doesn’t mean you won’t be having clients over, right? Well that’s one of the few things you should consider when making your small home office functional.

When dealing with the color of your home office, experts of Home Office Colors and Tips to Lighten Your Mood and Improve Your Productivity at Behr.com suggest that you should consider whether or not you want to create a strictly professional look and feel.

For instance, consider what type of business you’re running. Will you be having clients over or not? Since clientele may greatly influence the look and feel of your home office due to the image you want to represent, you’ll want to take special care in the color you choose to represent the image of your business.

Will a cool color like blue be best? Relaxing color like white? Or perhaps a neutral color like green or yellow?

Understanding the Best Way to Light Your Home Office

When it comes to lighting, you can focus on 3 different ways to light your small home office. You can direct your attention toward all three, but first you should know what each is and how it can help you.

The 3 different ways to light your small home office are with…

Ambient lights
Task lights
Accent lights

All of which can play an important part in creating the perfect balance between business and pleasure.

Ambient Lights

Ambient light provides light to your surrounding area. In other words, it is light that shines in all directions—that illuminates your room.

It’s likely that you’ll naturally pick out a lamp or lighting system for your home office that will light your entire home office since by default most of us do.

But if you’re not sure what type of lamps provide ambient light, it may help to point them out to you so that you can purchase one or more.

Lamps or lighting systems that offer ambient light are torchieres, overhead lights, such as ceiling fixtures and so forth.

Obviously, ambient light is a must and something you cannot choose to avoid getting since it will account for the majority of the light in your small home office.

So, if you’re on a budget and looking for an affordable solution, it’s likely that a torchiere will be your top choice. You can get them a your local store or simply purchase them online at a place like LampsPlus.com which offers a nice selection of torchieres.

Task Lights

Task lights offer directional light. That is, they light a specific area or create a focal point so that you can see things clearly. The name suggests just that, that the focused and illuminated light allows you to complete tasks easily without eyestrain or headaches.

Typically, they allow you to read easily, write and accomplish your computer tasks at hand. Generally, your tasks are made even simpler because you are given the ability to adjust the lamp when needed so that the light might be properly directed.

You will definitely need a task light for your small home office so that you can effectively achieve your daily work load, otherwise you may risk eyestrain, headaches and even slower productivity. In short, task lights will likely mean greater work performance.

Accent Lights

Accent lights also provide directional light, except the main point of accent lights is to draw attention to a specific object in order to showcase it. Typically this object is personal or adds a personal touch.

However you’ll find, unlike the two above choices, that accent lights are optional. You may choose to have them or not have them in your small home office depending on your interests.

Deciding on the Storage Furniture That You’ll Need

As said before, a large part of your storage furniture may be taken care of with a wall office desk which often includes a place for storage in addition to fulfilling your needs for a desk. However, chances are good that it may not solve all of your problems.

You still may have to worry about getting a bookcase, file cabinet and possibly even a room divider if happen to work in a room that doubles as a bedroom or you work with someone and you want to create a little privacy for yourself.

If you’re interested in getting a bookcase, you can even get modular systems or bookcase room dividers that will section off a room and fulfill your need for privacy while offering you storage.

One of the first and best things you can do for yourself is have an idea in mind where you want to put your bookcase. That alone will help you eliminate bookcases that you might have your eye on but can’t accommodate for.

Use measuring tape or a yardstick and take note of the maximum dimensions that you can allot for. That way you can look for bookcases that fall within that range.

Some experts say that it’s best to place your furniture in a room in an “L” or “U” shape so that you can get to everything within easy reach. So you may want to try and place your bookcase in a specific location, keeping that principle idea in mind.

When considering bookcases you may also want to decide on whether you prefer one with adjustable shelves which allow to accommodate for oversized books. Or you could even go for bookcases with doors, if you prefer to add a distinct touch to your home office.

As far as file cabinets go you’ll want to keep paper size in mind. Some file cabinets only accomodate for either letter or legal size. Others accommodate for both so you may want to consider whether you’ll need both paper sizes.

You’ll have the option to choose from vertical or lateral file cabinets. You’ll need to also consider whether you want an internal locking system which will only allow you to open one drawer at a time.

And let’s not forget the safety of your files in case of a fire. A fire resistent cabinet may spare important documents should the unfortunate incident of a fire take place. Also if you want to be on the safe side, there are file cabinets that ensure safety against tipping over if several drawers are opened simultaneously.

It’s a lot to think about and can be quite costly but you can get special tips via File Cabinets Buyer’s Guide which will make it all a much simpler task for you.

Coming up with an Effective Way to Stay Organized

Maintaining organization can be an extremely difficult thing to do if you’re not quite sure how to go about it. So, a few simple steps that you could do to keep the flow of organization going could be to categorize your files and books by how frequently you use them.

OnlineOrganizing.com experts suggest the least needed storage files should be the furtherest away, stored in an inactive work zone, whereas your most needed items should be close at hand.

So it may be a matter of coming up with three different storage zones. Storage zones could include…

Frequent Storage
Occasional Storage
Rare Storage

In case you’re interested in getting an idea about each storage zone, let’s talk about that now.

Storage Zone One
Frequent Storage are items that you access daily. It is suggested you place them close at hand so that they’ll always be there when you need them.

An idea is that you could place papers that you need on a daily basis in a small bin on your desk so that you can access them almost instantaneously at any moment.

If you have books that are also accessed daily, consider placing them on a wall mounted shelf nearby or on your desk. Or you could designate the top shelf of your bookcase the “it” place for your frequently used books.
Storage Zone Two
Occassional Storage are items that are accessed from time to time but not on a daily basis.

To keep it simple, you may wish to place your occasional storage files within the work zone area. Perhaps beside or under your desk in a file cabinet. You could store your papers in a simple vertical file cabinet.

If you have books that are access from time to time, you could designate the second highest shelf the “it” place for your occasionally used books.
Storage Zone Three
Rare Storage is your achived files. You may wish to purchase a completely different file cabinet for it if it suits you. A lateral file cabinet might work well with archived files.
As for books that you rarely use but sometimes need, you could designate your lowest shelves for your rarely used books. That way you will only have to bend down on rare occasions to get them.

Step Three – Making Your Small Home Office Personal

This is where you come in. If you want a little more personality in your small home office, you can take the opportunity to add in a small amount of everything.

You might want to add a little…

Family life in your home office by adding occasional photos of family and friends, flowers, etc.
Nature to your small home office by adding a plant or fish aquarium that you can look at. Or how about a water fountain of some kind?
Stress relief to your home office by placing a rubik’s cube in your side drawer, stress balls or even a fun little basketball hoop along your wall that you can toss balls into when things get a little too serious.

Finding The Perfect Balance

You want to make sure your home office exudes professionalism but you want to also make certain that it includes personality.

Practicality + Functionality + Personality = a home office that you can enjoy on a professional and personal level.

Don’t forget that you want a small home office that will set your work life apart from your home life but not completely exclude it. After all, that’s what it’s about isn’t it…

Finding the perfect mixture of business and pleasure. You don’t want one interfering with the other. You want a productive day at work but you don’t necessarily want to forget you’re working from home and that you call the shots.

Otherwise if you wanted a rigid lifestyle, you probably wouldn’t be working at home in the first place.

So keep in mind that all 3 steps are essential to creating the perfect small home office. Each is as relevant as the next. It’s just a matter of what percentage you want of each in your small home office.

For example, some small home offices will allow for a lot “Personality” whereas others may only allow you to add 5-10% “Personality” into the look and feel do to needing to keep your business image on the extremely professional side of things.

And once you’ve sat down and considered the right balance for your small home office, your reward will be a productive day of work at home each and every day.

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